Certain components, when wired to a printed circuit board, provide their own mechanical stability upon mounting and soldering. For example, when a standard resistor is mounted to a printed circuit board, the leads of the resistor are inserted through holes which are spaced apart from each other a distance slightly greater than the length of the resistor. The leads are pulled through the back of the printed circuit board until the length of the resistor itself rests against the board. The excess lead length is snipped off and then the resistor is soldered to the board.
Other components, however, are not mounted horizontally or lengthwise along the board, but are mounted in a more or less vertical direction such as disc capacitors. In this situation, the connection electrical leads emanate from the bottom or short dimension of the device and would be mounted similarly to the resistor as set forth above. However, the vertical configuration of the part does not make for a stable mount to a board. If the board is not mishandled until the board becomes more or less permanently mounted in the final equipment, no physical damage, of course, will occur to the electrical part. However, a printed circuit board goes through many mechanical and human procedures before coming to rest in a piece of equipment. That is, the board has to be stuffed with all the components, then it has to be soldered, then it has to be mechanically and electrically tested, stored, shipped, and finally installed. In all these operations, the possibility of an inadvertent lateral force being applied to the vertically mounted piece becomes great. Such a lateral force could cause breakage of the component, pull the leads out of the solder connection, cause a short circuit with the adjacent component, and so on.
Mounting brackets are known in the prior art for mounting components to printed circuit boards. Most of these brackets or mounting devices must themselves, however, be mounted to the board. Such items could include vacuum tube sockets, transistor sockets, dual in line package sockets as for integrated circuits, and so on.
According to the present invention, a mounting support or spacer is disclosed. The advantages of the invention are mainly that the support or spacer is inexpensive to make, is made out of inexpensive plastic, and does not have to be itself mounted to a printed circuit board. Further, the device provides lateral support for the electrical component for which it is designed, provides vertical spacing from the printed circuit board to prevent shorts and allow sufficient air circulation, and provides lateral spacing between similar or dissimilar circuit components on the board.